When asked about his relationship with his investment
bankers, Thiam dodged the question.

He talked instead about the markets, or trading, division of the
firm and then moved on to discuss the UK's vote to leave the
European Union.

Here's how it went:

FL: "Do you have the support of your investment
bankers?"

TT: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
I wrote a memo to congratulate everyone for Brexit, because it
took a lot of coordination to manage that well. We had worked for
weeks. Two weeks before, I got uncomfortable. I could see the
bookies were saying there was a 22 percent chance of Brexit,
which was too high. It was a bit like a Russian roulette
probability. We had to set a maximum loss, and then we took that
number down. We went into the referendum in a safe place, and our
execution was excellent because it was across units, across
markets, across divisions. It was a robust, real-life stress
test, and I'm thrilled how well the organization performed.
Everybody pulled together."

Four people familiar with the matter told Business Insider
the departures were related to overall sentiment within the
investment bank and a sense of being undervalued by Thiam.

Since taking charge in June 2015, Thiam has pivoted the focus of
the firm toward the wealth-management division and away from the
investment bank. In January he
said the pay model for investment bankers was broken and
their compensation should not always remain stable or increase
but rather should fluctuate with the market.

Those moves have rubbed bankers the wrong way, the people said.

All the more significant, then, that Thiam was not equipped with
a ready response when asked about his relationship with that
critical part of the firm.